The silence of night blanketed the household like a veil. All the lamps had gone out. The candles had melted into wax puddles. Even the crickets seemed to hush around the edges of the forest beyond the house.
Avelina finished the last of her chores at exactly 1:00 AM.
Her back ached. Her hands were raw and blistered. Her eyelids felt like heavy stones—but still, she didn't cry. Not tonight. Crying wasted breath. It wasted what little strength she had left.
She had scrubbed the floors until they gleamed, carried in two buckets of water from the well, plucked the feathers from the chickens her aunt had slaughtered earlier, and finished sewing a ripped hem on Iridessa's gown — the expensive blue one her cousin refused to wear twice. She even pressed her aunt Rhoswen's dress, though no one had asked her to.
Rhoswen had left all the work in a sharp tone:
"Make sure the house sparkles by morning. And don't touch the good blankets with those filthy hands of yours."
So she worked. And worked. And worked.
Not once did Iridessa or Calla offer to help. They had gone to sleep hours ago, giggling under their bedsheets about which of them would get picked for the Raventhorn letter, even though no one had ever seen Dreken Raventhorn in their lifetime. To them, it was a fantasy. A game.
But to Avelina… it was something else.
She opened the creaky front door and stepped into the moonlight, breathing in the night air as if it could wash away the weight in her chest.
She looked up.
The stars stretched endlessly above her — burning, twinkling things that didn't know her name. But she still whispered to them. Every night.
Avelina wrapped her arms around herself and sat on the porch steps, her skirt pooling around her ankles.
"Please," she whispered, voice low and raspy. "Let someone… just one person… see me."
It wasn't the first time she had asked.
She didn't want gold. She didn't want a crown or a castle or ballgowns that glittered.
She wanted to be chosen.
She wanted to matter to someone — not because of what she did, or what she endured. But because of who she was. Whoever that even was anymore.
Her mother used to say she was born with a fire in her. A spark in her soul. But that spark had been smothered long ago by the broom in her hand and the cold eyes of the people who saw her as nothing more than a maid in her own family's home.
Her fingers curled into fists at her side. A thought struck her — one she'd tried to suppress, but never quite could.
Magic.
She had it. She knew she did. Deep inside. Small, flickering. Untrained. Forgotten.
Her mother had whispered it in her last breath.
"Don't let them take the magic from you, Avelina. It's ancient. And it's yours."
She stood, shaky and determined, stepping barefoot into the grass. Dew clung to her toes.
She extended her hand toward a withered flower growing near the fencepost. A dying thing. Perfect for a test.
She closed her eyes and called on the warmth inside her chest — the ember she barely felt anymore.
"Luxanthera..." she whispered — a name her mother once said meant light reborn.
But the flower didn't move.
No glow. No hum.
Nothing.
She grit her teeth, trying again. This time louder.
"Luxanthera!"
A spark flickered in her palm — just a shimmer of light.
But it fizzled instantly, vanishing like smoke in wind.
Her shoulders trembled. Her legs gave way, and she dropped to her knees in the wet grass.
"Why won't you work?" she gasped, tears finally breaking through. "Why can't I do anything right?"
She sobbed, quietly, into the dark. Not loud enough for anyone to hear. Not loud enough to wake the ones who treated her like she didn't exist.
The stars stared down, cold and unblinking.
"I don't even need it to be a prince," she murmured through tears. "Let it be a monster. A villain. A cursed soul. I don't care. Let them come. Let them take me away from this life."
Somewhere in the sky, a shadow passed over the moon.
She didn't see it.
Didn't hear the flutter of wings slicing through the wind.
Didn't see the obsidian-feathered raven descending toward her rooftop.
Didn't know that her whisper had already been heard by something old and bound by fate.
She just sat there — knees to chest, head against the cold porch railing — never knowing that this would be the last time she ever begged for freedom.